Joseph Walker

Joseph was born in Tully, near Edgeworthstown, on the 18 March 1885. Prior to WW1, Joseph was an agricultural labourer. Joseph married Rose Mulvey of Coolarty on the 23 September 1913 in St. Mary's Granard.

Joseph enlisted for war service shortly after WW1 broke out, and arrived in France (Rouen) on the 21 August 1914; it is likely that he was previously with the Army and was on Special Reserve. He is very likely the subject of an nterview given to the Longford Leader in January 1915, where he described the scale of the casualties in the opening months of the war, where he estimated that out of 1800 troops, only a dozen or so came out comparatively safely. Pte Walker was likely with the 2nd Royal Irish Rifles, and took part in the Battle of Mons, the Battle of the Marne 1914, the Battle of the Aisne in the opening months of the war.  He then fought in the 1st Battle of Ypres, and was then wounded in the shoulder in November/December 1914, whilst fighting at the front in Flanders; he returned to Granard in January 1915 to recouperate.

Interestingly, Joseph may have been in Limerick in late October 1914, about a month after the retreat from Mons, as a Joseph Walker with almost identical details, (albeit 10 years younger and with his parents in Coolarty, Edgeworthstown) enlisted with the Royal Garrison Artillery (Regimental Number 48187). However, that Joseph never joined the regiment in Plymouth and there was a suggestion that he was serving elsewhere. 

Joseph was discharged from active service on the 12 April 1916, and his address at this time was given as Lisryan.

He appears

Longford Leader, Granard Man Back From the War; link to Civil Record of Birth; link to Civil Record of Marriage; likely Civil Record of Death;